


Firing on All Cylinders

by bluesyturtle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Boys In Love, Coda, Crowley Ships it, Episode Tag, Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, Feelings, Fix-It, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Not Really Character Death, POV Castiel, Sam Ships It, Sassy Crowley, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to s11e23: Alpha and Omega</p><p>After the sun goes back to normal and everybody realizes Dean got the scales to balance out, Cas sees something that gives him hope. If it means Dean might still be alive, he has to hope, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firing on All Cylinders

“And Dean?”

The sun holds Castiel’s gaze while his vision blurs, corrects, and blurs. Sam turns to look at him, but he doesn’t speak. He’s fidgeting in a restless pattern of shuffling feet and twitching shoulders. His heartbeat is loud and heavy. The raggedness of his breathing is reined in for the sake of hiding his pain. To Castiel, these sounds are thunder and rain, for what else can explain the misting in their eyes or the unrelenting wind in their lungs if this grief is not a storm?

He had not thought to lose Dean like this. They had come to the end of the world before and they had been together for it, but now here the planet continues spinning on its axis without him. It isn’t right. Dean should not go where Castiel can’t follow. 

So much of their time has been spent and squandered apart from each other. Dean is gone, he’s dead, and they let him go to his end alone. It isn’t right.

It isn’t right.

_Why did I suggest the souls as a weapon? Why did I suggest Dean carry them? Why?_

But he knows why. It was the same kind of spiteful thinking that landed Lucifer in Castiel’s skin that prompted him to say it. Maybe because it stung him that Dean wasn’t angry with him for jeopardizing himself; maybe because it stung him that he _wanted_ Dean to be angry with him when, really, the absence of that anger meant he had come to respect Castiel’s choice.

For his cracked chassis and his complicated handle on free will, for his despondent need to belong, and for his constant deep and terrible sadness, Castiel was built flawed. He was not hardwired to be a machine, and searching the clear blue sky for some sign that he won’t find reinforces that fact.

Castiel was built to be irrational and emotional and to love his Father’s creation and to cry at the blinding ache of loss, of regret. To wonder at microscopic flutters of pollen in the air with the same measure of awe as he does the brilliant streaks of divinity painting the edges of the atmosphere in sunbeams, the pounding of Sam’s heart in his chest, or the fact that none of them have moved since they walked out of the bar. They can’t leave just yet. The oppressive tension of looming obliteration lingers like the smell of sulfur.

A sharp jolt snags at the back of Castiel’s neck, the hindbrain impulse of hackles prickling up. He strides across the street and jumps onto the sidewalk, turning only when a building impedes further advancement. Sam, Rowena, and Crowley watch him, startled and disturbed at his behavior. The angle is wrong. The direction is true.

Sam calls after him, twice when he receives no response. “Cas?”

He scrambles on top of a car a ways down the street to peer higher over the buildings, swears at his shortsightedness, and teleports on top of a nearby establishment within his present company’s line of sight. Crowley appears at his shoulder not a moment later.

“You’re upsetting Moose, you pillock. What are you playing at?”

And then Castiel sees it. Tendrils of grace and smoke unfurling from the horizon. He squints at the mismatched, faraway cut of ribbon bisecting the sky and points. The double helix twists itself a dozen times. Crowley makes a thoughtful noise, turns to look over his shoulder pointedly, and snaps his fingers. Rowena materializes at Castiel’s shoulder mid-sentence.

“—wouldn’t just leave us, ah, see, there. Not to worry, Samuel.”

“What the hell, Cas?”

Sam’s outburst clashes harshly with Rowena’s tranquil commiseration. He flaps his hands in a futile display of frustration and then cards his hands through his hair, frantic.

“I’m sorry, Sam. Look.”

They fall silent, contemplating the sight. It is both of them, Chuck and Amara, entwined.

“I would have expected fireworks,” Crowley murmurs finally, audibly disappointed but rigid through the shoulders. His body language speaks of uncertainty and his tone of boredom. “You did say _bomb_ , Mother Dearest.”

“A bomb it was, _Fer_ gus.”

“Lodged right in Squirrel’s chest.”

Sparing a cautious glance at Sam, Castiel says, “Crowley.”

“No, _listen_ to me,” he enunciates, turning on his heel. “Did you see an explosion of epic proportions? That underground war room of yours lit up like the Northern Lights with fewer colors. Where was the spectacle? Did. You. See it? Because I did not.”

“Well, there…wasn’t much of a fanfare, now that you mention it,” Castiel cedes, reluctant to hope in so grim a situation. “But we’re quite a distance away, that could mean anything.”

“It would have detonated by now, whether he pulled the trigger or not,” Rowena adds, voice gentled.

“He had to.” Sam ducks his chin, looking away from the twisting streams of energy. “God and the Darkness, he got ‘em both. That’s the only way there’d be a balance now. You saw Chuck at the end. He wasn’t fit to fight. Amara could’ve ripped him apart with her pinky finger, as bad as he looked.”

“What would have been the purpose of dragging her half-dead brother back into the fray?” Crowley chimes in, unconvinced. “Her attack on him after our little coup was to maim, not kill.”

Sam shakes his head and gestures forcefully with one hand. “So she wanted to gloat. Or she wanted to see him one last time before she got blown to hell. Take your pick, Crowley, does it matter?”

“I think what Crowley’s trying to say, Sam, is that—”

_‘Hey, Cas, you got your ears on?’_

Castiel flings his arm out, flailing for a moment until he finds Sam’s shoulder, and gasps, “He survived.”

“What?”

_‘So turns out, putting Chuck through couple’s counseling was an idea worth repeating. Worked with Amara, at least. I mean, not that they’re a couple-couple. Pair of people. But ‘people’ is pushing it, too, huh? Christ, what a cluster.’_

“ _Dean_.”

“And here I thought I’d never hear my favorite desperate mating call again,” Crowley drawls with a smirk.

“Cas? Where is he? Is he hurt?”

_‘So Amara set up shop in this aces little garden with a huge skylight. Kinda Stonehenge-y, I bet you’d like it. You could keep bees here and they’d love it. All this sun, the flowers.’_

Castiel blinks, a buzzing, melting sensation creeping between his ribs. Sam, Rowena, and Crowley are staring at him, but he can’t bear to interrupt. He thought he’d never answer another one of Dean’s prayers, yet here Dean is, monologuing directly into the cradle of his skull. His voice in Castiel’s head is so peaceful.

_‘Chuck 86’d the bomb. Feel sorta rickety, but everything works. I gotta walk a ways to find out where I am and I don’t get service out here, so I figured maybe if I just sat here and thought about you really hard, you’d zip in and get me. Claire said that’s how it works. Funny how you never mentioned that.’_

Warmth spreads into his fingertips, and like a shot, his grace fires on all cylinders. The familiar lash and pull that hums _Dean, Dean, Dean_ in his heart, in his hands, in his throat.

 _Oh,_ he thinks. _There you are._

“I know where he is,” Castiel murmurs, steadying his grip on Sam’s shoulder so that they won’t be flung apart when he takes off. To Crowley and Rowena, he says, “You should go to the bunker, wait for us there.”

“Sorry, why?” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Your bonny lad’s clearly alive. Just what do you still need me for?”

“He had a bomb in his chest,” Castiel deadpans. “You put it there, you’ll know if all of it’s gone.”

“And _you’re_ an angel. You think you _won’t_ know?”

“Please, it’s safest there. Until we know we’re clear and this peace isn’t illusory, I would prefer us to stay together.”

“Then we should go with you,” Crowley says. “Mummy can assess the damage straight away to your heart’s content and scamper off to some remote corner of the earth as soon as we’re settled.”

Sam starts to fidget again, anxious to reunite with his brother, even as an accusing little scowl blossoms on Rowena’s mouth, bringing out the mussed, glittery smears that ring her eyes.

“What about you? Looking for an excuse to hitch a ride? At _my_ expense when I’ve already given so much.”

_‘Crap, am I doing it wrong? Would I know if I was doing it wrong?’_

There’s no time to stay and bicker. They’ve idled long enough.

Sam stumbles at the change in ground, Crowley hardly reacts, and Rowena makes an astonished, affronted noise. Dean turns his head at the commotion— _Dean_ , alive and whole and responsive—and pushes to his feet. He sat on grassy ground with his back to a stone pillar, waiting for them to come and retrieve him.

No sooner than Dean’s standing, Sam is upon him, all long arms and noisy relief that had been so quiet as mourning. Castiel stands back, giving them their space. Dean called Castiel a brother, but he can’t go to them yet. This is still theirs first, whether they share it with him, too, or not.

“Still no fireworks,” Crowley mumbles, leering at the many flowerbeds. 

“Fluid grace hotter than a thousand suns, wisps of the darkness that came before time was,” Castiel says, observing Sam and Dean embrace as they had little over an hour ago. “Is that not a display of thrilling pyrotechnics, if at a primordial level?”

“Does it get exhausting for you?” Rowena asks him. “Seeing all of the world from way up there?”

“You don’t mean the physical height of my body,” Castiel says.

Rowena opens her mouth, thinks better of it, and holds his cheek in her hand. “He used you to kill me, you know.”

His heart sinks and his stomach flips. He says, “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you are.” She pats his cheek. “You and your poor fool heart.”

“Cas.”

It’s all the warning he gets before he’s pulled into a hug, familiar for how recently it last ensconced him but novel for how few and far between those instances are. He holds on tightly for longer than he should, despairing at the inevitable moment of separation. Dean smiles at him, radiant, clutching at his shoulders still.

“You got my message.”

“The beacon you sent was quite efficient.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not unfamiliar with your particular brand of longing, Dean.”

He sees Sam smile over Dean’s shoulder.

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Everyone and their mother could boast as much.”

“You know what,” Dean says, flushed but grinning. “I’m feeling generous, so I’m gonna let that one slide.”

Castiel supposes that’s an acceptable attitude to have after cheating death and the apocalypse in the same day. Rowena clicks her tongue, not as easily assuaged.

“You’re one to talk about longing, Fergus. Give it here, then.” She gestures at Dean’s chest. “Can’t be too cautious with something so volatile that close to your heart. And your spine, no less.”

“What?” Dean balks but bats her hand away. “Jesus, I didn’t even think about that.”

Rowena persists. “No, you wouldn’t have. And it’s not like I was going to tell you. Now sit still.”

“I’m good. Chuck took it out.” Dean steps back and bars his arm in front of Castiel so as not to let him come between them. “He’s God, it’s not like he would’ve left any pieces behind.”

“Then I can go,” she relents, dropping her hands. “Lovely seeing you gents for the end of times, but I’ve got places to be.”

“Is there a way you can find Clea in some other timeline?” Sam asks, distracting her from Dean.

“I’ll be looking for a while,” she muses, examining her nails, preening under the attention. “But that only seems fair, I suppose, given the state this battle left her in. Otherwise I’d be on my own, and naturally, I do my best work in front of an audience.”

“You mean with a coven,” Sam says.

She blinks. “Of course.”

Crowley snorts. “Now who’s angling for a ride out of here, hmm, Mother? All your big plans, I don’t hear an exit strategy.”

“That, I have. Give me _some_ credit. I wouldn’t, however, mind a spot of company.”

“You’re serious.”

Dean glances sideways at Castiel, grimacing to convey an emotion. Skepticism?

Castiel furrows his eyebrows to convey an emotion back, thinking, _You did mention family counseling earlier._

Eyebrows flicking up once in what Castiel can only assume is agreement, Dean waves his hand for him and Sam to walk with him toward a line of trees.

“You’re not going to _leave me_ with her!” Crowley shouts, half a question.

Dean tosses his arm over Castiel’s shoulders and winds the other around Sam’s back. Castiel is just about to offer to fly them home, but Dean anticipates him and shakes his head.

“Nah, no more of that. I already feel bad asking you to come get me like this. Probably shoulda just made it back the old-fashioned way, but I couldn’t wait. Can you imagine, you go all out and book Gary Busey to speak for me just for me to not be dead at my own fancy-ass funeral?”

“Dean, shut up,” Sam sighs, smiling.

“I have to agree with Sam on this one, Dean.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is.”

Sam laughs. “That’s how it is.”

They walk a while longer in companionable silence, linked loosely along their shoulder blades by Dean’s arms. Dean smells faintly of chocolate—likely a scent from the garden they found him in. A whimsical idea strikes him as he’s sorting through his stores of knowledge pertaining to all types of flora that give off the aroma he’s picking up on now.

“Were some of them purple?” he asks, turning slightly into the comfortable bend of Dean’s elbow. 

“Hmm?”

“The flowers. Did you see any that were purple in color? Oh.” He raises his hand to Dean’s eighth and ninth vertebrochondral ribs. “Dean, that was inconsiderate of you. You crushed them.”

“What? Did not. How can you tell?”

He plucks a flattened fragment of a petal off Dean’s jacket. It sticks to his fingertip easily, small but incriminating. 

Sam chuckles on Dean’s other side. “Busted.”

“I was saving that.”

“Were you,” Castiel says, pretending to be more offended than he is because it helps him to feel less overwhelmed about the rest of it. “For what?”

“For you?”

“Is that a question?”

“No, it’s…I just know you like purple.”

“You are so full of shit, Dean,” Sam teases, grinning boyishly at the sky.

“Actually, this flower would be better suited to your tastes than mine,” Castiel cuts in before Dean can compose a riposte to Sam’s comment. “H. peruvianum, the heliotrope, is commonly called the ‘cherry pie plant’ for its distinctive fragrance.”

“Hey, you kind of got pie,” Sam translates.

“I did not get pie.” Dean immediately sulks. “I would know it if I got pie.”

“Could you not bake a pie?”

Sam shrugs. “To celebrate? I don’t see why not.”

“No, you know what we need? Burgers. And beer and homemade french fries and pie for dessert. And you,” he adds, turning a salacious smile and a wink on Castiel, “get to tell me all about the molecules.”

He shouldn’t ask, he knows. Dean obviously just invited him along to their meal, and it’s not as if Castiel has anywhere else to go. But that hasn’t stopped him from packing up and leaving before, so it ought not to have any bearing in his ability to leave now either. If they have defeated their final terrible monster, then they won’t need a seraph in their pocket; they won’t need an archangel either.

It’s difficult to believe. He wants it to be true and that makes it hard.

“At the bunker,” Castiel says, nervous to turn it into a conversation but dreading the possibility of false hope. “At your home.”

“Yeah, Cas, home.” Dean swings his arms down to his sides and bumps Castiel’s shoulder. “C’mon, I told you, didn’t I? And not just today.”

“I remember.”

“Well, as often as you remember it, I mean it. Hey, are we good?”

“Yes, we’re good.”

“Sam, give us a minute?”

“Dean, that’s not necessary. I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me then,” Dean murmurs, hardly waiting for Sam to get out of earshot. “I got God and his sister to hold hands today with the power of my mind. You’re not gonna make me fight you on this, are you?” 

Castiel sighs. “No.”

“Dude, look, an hour ago, I thought I was gonna get soul-nuked, and that sucked, okay?”

“Yes, it sucked,” Castiel intones, solemn as the grave.

Dean nods, undeterred. “But at least I felt like we were leaving things okay with us ‘coz that made it easier. So what happened?”

“Our mission is complete,” Castiel tells him, guileless. “We won the battle, and Sam…you don’t need me to take care of him in your place.”

Dragging out the vowel, Dean says, “No.” He raises his eyebrows. “So stay with us anyway.”

“Hunt with you, be your backup.”

“No, or I don’t know, maybe, if you want. Remember you were hunting on your own for a while and got pretty good at it? Hey, if you wanted to come with, then yeah, sure. You call the shots. Think we’ll be taking a break for a while if we can swing it. We can go fishing, make Sam come camping with us. Could be good times.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dean runs a hand through his hair, forward and back.

“Cas, you’re just—you’re family, and I…” Dean pauses, working his jaw. “You pick cherry pie flowers off my jacket and bees remind me of when you were naked that time, you weirdo, and you’re just really damn important to me, okay? And I don’t want you to ever feel like you need to go off making dumbass reckless decisions just to prove that you carry your weight. That’s not how it works, you hear me?”

A dull flutter trips in Castiel’s heart. His own heart, bleeding and pulsating with such longing that he wonders if Dean has any sense of awareness for it. It would only be right for Dean to feel it since it calls to him like the beacon that called—that _calls_ —for Castiel. 

“You told me it was the right call to let Lucifer in,” he reminds Dean, working to sound neutral and failing. “You said it was our best shot.”

“I didn’t think yelling at you for screwing up was the best way to welcome you back! I didn’t…Jesus, and then the whole deal with the soul bomb. There wasn’t time for it. There wasn’t…I had things I needed to tell you, all right? And I thought we ran out of time.”

Eyes reddening and glossing over, Dean throws his hands much like Sam does when agitated. He sighs and looks away. Castiel steels himself.

“We didn’t run out of time, Dean.”

“Come have burgers and fries and beer with us then,” he implores, eyes wide and searching. “Stay. With us, Cas. Stay.”

He considers this simple request laid bare at his feet. A simple response should suffice.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Dean’s tone is earnest, hopeful, and determined.

Cas smiles. “Yes. I’ll stay with you.”

“Oh, thank bloody _Charles_.”

Frowning, they both turn around in time to see Rowena a good distance off with Crowley at her side. She throws a bag of something down at her feet and yells, Cas thinks, “ _Solivagant, dérive._ ”

Before they disappear in a spray of orange powder, he also hears Crowley shout, “Kiss the poor sod, Castiel.”

“Oh it’s a good thing he’s running to a different dimension right now,” Dean mutters in a dangerous low tone that Cas finds very amusing given the circumstances.

“Perhaps we should keep going.”

“Yeah.” Dean kicks at the ground and pockets his hands in his jacket. The side of his neck is painted in a rash of deep pink, verging on scarlet. “Yeah, fine.”

Cas takes two precise steps closer into Dean’s space, gives him time enough to weigh his options, and leans in to press his nose to the apple of his cheek. His skin is warm and smells like a different type of flower, less like chocolate and more like vanilla. He lifts his hand to cup Dean’s cheek and stays where he is, breathing in the varied floral scents clinging to Dean’s skin.

“When I thought you were gone, I felt utterly alone.”

“That’s not very nice to Sam,” Dean whispers, aiming for levity and only barely hitting the desired note.

“Not lonely. Alone. I missed your presence. He did as well.”

Dean cards his fingers briefly through Castiel’s hair and then takes his hand back, breaks away to clear his throat. He nods, deciding something.

“Let’s get going. Sammy!”

Sam jogs back toward them with a soft smile for Cas and a devious smirk for Dean. He says, “CasDean?”

“Really, you’re really goin’ there. No hesitation whatsoever.”

“So you do like Destiel better.” Sam raises his eyebrows, fighting back a laugh when Dean rolls his eyes. “Or wait, no, it’s Deestiel, isn’t it?”

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing! Nothing is happening. Sam’s an idiot, but you knew that.”

“No,” Cas counters. “Sam is highly intelligent.”

“Is this what it’s gonna be like? The two of you gangin’ up on me all the time?”

All the time—more times like this one, every time being just like this one. Safe and happy and playfully innocent. Intimate.

“He likes me better,” Sam croons. “He has good taste.”

“Whatever.” Dean scoffs. “Did you losers even _miss_ me when you thought I bit the big one?”

It’s a question that Dean knows the answer to a million times over, one that he’s beginning to see can’t be earned by utility or effort or war strategy. This kind of buzzing, warm interaction is easy, lighthearted, bought with compassion, and given for love.

Cas lifts his hand and winds his arm around Dean’s back, relaxing completely when Dean leans into his side. He and Sam continue to gang up on him, bantering and laughing.

Loving. A whole mess of love bundled in Castiel’s chest, wound up in his longing like fiery, ichorous grace twisted about roiling, mysterious smoke.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I choose to believe that Amara was camped out within a reasonable walking distance from the cemetery where Mary was buried and that that’s where she was resurrected (because the bird feeding woman could have been a local for all that I totally did not hear her accent and think “oh they must be a million miles away and would be completely undetectable if, say, a huge light like an emergency flare or um GOD went up”).
> 
> 2) Honestly I wrote this from the hours of 4 AM - 9:30 AM, I couldn't sleep because I was up thinking about this dumbass finale. Are there typos? Yeah, probably, I can't be arsed to beta my own stuff when I get excited. Throw in sleep deprivation, and everything just gets real silly. Sorry, my dudes. Feelsbadman
> 
> 3) I meant to write this up until when they get back to the bunker and TROUBLE~ strikes, but like, I am fuckin tired, son, who knows how I fucked up already.


End file.
